Bree woke up with a little bit of a sore throat and only ate the top of her muffin. After some Tylenol and a little more rest she felt ready to tackle the day. There was a light rain but it was much warmer. We headed out for the 9/11 Memorial. It was quite impressive and very moving. We didn't go into the museum since she will see it on her trip in May. We had lunch at The Amish market. Some teenage boys sat next to Breanna while I was paying for our food so she only ate her watermelon. She didn't want to eat her ham and cheese sandwich in...

Tried to get up early to get to The Today Show. We didn't make it. We did happen to catch the closing of GMA and you can see me waving for a second. The camera missed Bree sulking in the background. We went back to Cafe Europa again and each had a breakfast sandwich--ham for me and sausage and a bowl of fruit for Bree. We had to go back to the hotel because we had forgotten our umbrellas and we had bought muffins for tomorrow's breakfast. Bree said she had a headache and a sore throat because she hadn't gotten enough sleep so she took some...

Finally had to wake Bree up at 10:15. I was starving and wanted breakfast. We found a Cafe Europa, a deli with great food and bakery selections. I had 2 eggs, bacon, potatoes, and an English muffin and Bree had their version of a sausage Mc muffin and granola, fruit, and yogurt (and some of my bacon). We then got back on the Big Bus for the uptown tour. There weren't a lot of people on the bus and Bree spent time chatting with the tour guide and a boy from Brazil. After the tour she spotted a Capezio store where we spent a fair amount of...

After sleeping in and finishing our left over pasta for breakfast we headed out for Radio City Music Hall to try and get tickets for the Spring Spectacular with Derek Hough (we did). Checked out Rockefeller Center and the skating rink. Bree thought about going ice skating but decided to wait until later as it is supposed to be warming up a little and she wanted to go to the Observation Deck on top of Rockefeller Center. While waiting for our admittance time, we walked over to Times Square where Bree had her picture taken Batman and friends...

Wednesday 18 March
Day 10 - Sea day crossing the Atlantic
I've got a chest bug of some sort. There's been a bit on the ship and it's certainly easily passed around so we didn't do a lot today. Just a quiet day reading and the two games of Trivia and we did badly in both of those. We had another photography lecture this time on easy creative travel photography and getting the most out of your camera. Again we learned a lot and look forward to putting it into practice.
We also went to the spa - me for some acupuncture and John for a massage....

We left this morning for NYC. The flight was delayed about an hour because of work that was being done on the runways at JFK but we only arrived about 15 minutes late. Bree discovered how cold 24 degrees was. Took a cab into the city, checked into our hotel (The Belvedere on 48th betweek 8th and 9th), went to a local Italian restaurant--Patzeria Family and Friends for house salad and spaghetti with marinara for Bree and chicken vegetable soup and penne with Bolognese for me--, took a short walk through the neighborhood, and Bree ended the...

Monday 16 March
Day 8 Philipsburg, St Maarten, Virgin Islands
We were already in port at St Maartin by the time we got up. It was a beautiful day, hotter than yesterday but not as humid. There was no difficulty with getting the scooter off the ship and we were told that there was a good walkway to the town centre from the port.
At only 37 square miles, St Maartin is the smallest land mass in the world divided between the two governments. Having been abandoned by the Spanish in the mid 17th century, the French and Dutch moved onto the...

Saturday 14 March
Day 6 - Sea day sailing toward St Thomas
Today was another sea day. John was up early to have his walk and do his exercises in the gym but I prefer to do mine in the afternoon. It had been fairly rough over night although it looked as though it was going to be a stunning day with bright sunshine, blue skies and a calm sea. There were lots of boat activities so we did the tic tac golf, saw a lecture on the origin of navy terms (such as 'freezing the balls off the brass monkey'!), more trivia (we did better) and bocce ball...

Wednesday 11 March
Day 3 New York
We both also slept quite late feeling a lot more lively than we did yesterday. We decided to go out for breakfast. However our first attempt outside lasted about two minutes when we realised how cold the wind was! So we came back up to our room and put another layer on with our gloves, hats, scarves and parkas. Then we stopped off at Sbarro's, a typical New York Diner for breakfast. There was all you could eat breakfast for $9.95 but we stuck to the scrambled eggs and some truly awful coffee. Still it was...

Monday 9 March, 2015
Day 1
Depart Gold Coast
After 14 months of anticipation, planning and spending the children's inheritance we were up at half past four. We'd worked our way through numerous 'to do lists' over the past few weeks and readied our home for being vacant for three months. Sam, our Labrador and Possum, our Ragdoll Cat, had been taken to kennels which they actually quite enjoy, but we'll miss them. We were driving into the Wesley Hospital early for my final Tysabri infusion for three months before we fly to Dubai this evening....

Very quick one night stopover and some extreme cold.
I've always thought of New York as a place of extreme weather, hot in the summer and cold in the winter, similar to Moscow but I was wrong. The night we were here broke many records for temperatures in and around NY at about -17C, way warmer than my coldest temp in the UK (-27C) and world-wide (-40C in Siberia).

Day 0 – trip to the airport – February 13, 2015
Well our trip to the airport was quite eventful – as Friday afternoons are not the right times to go to JFK from home. Susie arrived to the farm from Albany on time and we left at 3:02PM for what is usually a 65 minute drive to the airport. We used the usual GPS tools to see which were the best roads to travel – and to our surprise they were all RED or DARK RED once we got over the bridge to Long Island.
But we did our best and actually went the back roads to get there- so we saw a bit of the...